I saw firsthand that our entrepreneurial landscape is spreading across the heartland.

For as long as I have been involved with start-ups, it has been an article of faith among entrepreneurs and investors that Silicon Valley is where you go to start the next billion-dollar technology company. There is no contesting that when it comes to cultivating a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem, Silicon Valley is the pride of America and the envy of the world.

But there is another side to this story, what I have routinely referred to as the "Rise of the Rest" — the belief that while Silicon Valley will remain dominant for the foreseeable future, new start-up ecosystems will emerge all across the country and the geography for high-growth entrepreneurship in America will itself be disrupted.

It would be difficult to overstate the magnitude of this trend and what it means for the future of America. At heart, entrepreneurship is the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. It stands to reason that facilitating a more evenly distributed entrepreneurial landscape — with every region of the country contributing — is in our vital national interest, and an essential criterion for preserving the middle class and that very simple idea we know as the "American Dream."

Late last month I endeavored to test this hypothesis and together with a few partners launched a "Rise of the Rest" bus tour to four iconic American cities: Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Nashville. Our goal: to catalyze entrepreneurship in America's heartland and celebrate its progress.

In the course of four days, I met with more than 100 start-up CEOs and co-founders, heard dozens of pitches, visited 10 start-up accelerators, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in promising young start-ups and talked at length with leaders in the political and business establishment.

Reflecting on that experience, four conclusions are worth noting:

The rest is rising. Technological advances (cloud computing), new fund-raising alternatives (crowdfunding), and partnership opportunities that did not exist just a few years ago are making it easier and cheaper to start companies where people prefer to live. My prediction is that by the end of 2015, for the first time ever, more venture capital will be invested east of the Mississippi River than in Silicon Valley.

Startups are indispensable to community development. While they exist to create jobs, drive innovation, disrupt industries and grow our economy, start-ups engender the spirit and the purpose upon which communities are built. I was struck by how — like artists or musicians — entrepreneurs and their teams are forming a new creative class in many Rust Belt cities, bringing new vibrancy and vigor to towns that have fallen on tough times. There is no doubt we need to do more to increase diversity in the start-up sector — a challenge that was all too apparent in the places I visited. But the passion is real and it's contagious, and the more it spreads the faster these cities will rise.

It's not just tech. I love technology and dedicated my career to building technology companies. But a sizeable minority of the companies we met are disrupting other, decisively non-tech industries — from the way we buy eyeglasses to the way we eat to the way we move around. I am all for raising the bar on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, but you don't have to know how to code to launch a start-up.

Government matters. There is no substitute for an engaged civic leadership that recognizes the importance of start-up development. But outside Washington, the issues that concern entrepreneurs are not partisan.

I was fortunate to spend part of each day with public officials — Democrats, Republicans and Independents. They all essentially said the same thing: they want fewer restrictions on access to capital, less red tape, immigration reform, expanded crowdfunding, and an education system that systematically prepares students for 21st century jobs. The sentiment could not have been clearer: it's time for Washington to stop the endless posturing and start doing what so clearly needs to be done if America is to remain a land of opportunity.

Taking up the cause of America's entrepreneurs strikes many as banal and out-of-touch. I could not disagree more. Absent entrepreneurship, our economy will never come back and the most severe problems we face – disease, climate change, income inequality, the federal debt — will only grow worse. Our prosperity depends on having a robust and diverse start-up economy that is not tethered to one city or one region. That is the Rise of the Rest and it must be relentlessly pursued.

Steve Case is chairman and CEO of Revolution, a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm.